okay we all see these threads around the forums so i decided that we should all do what we can to help stop this "problem" (?)

first smithing, enchanting, alchemy. . .if this game has an easy button this is it. Skyrim is about choice, it does not expect you to max out smithing and smith your gear to legendary. this is a good thing as it does not force people to invest time, money, or perks into a skill just so they can play the game.

Q: But i play on teh "Masters" difficulty and its still easy?!

A: true, at master level difficulty your doing half damage, and enimies are doing double damage, that does seem pretty bad in theory. However if your wearing fully smithed armor you have probobly hit the armor cap, so at most your only taking 20% of the enemy damage, here is some math

swing A does 100 damage x2 master diff = 200, armor cap at 80% = 40 damage got through

so on master diff at the armor cap enemy damage is about that of just below novice, you are taking less damage then the lowest diff setting.

Q: but im also doing less damage!

A: true again, however your weilding a fully smithed deadric sword with +weapon damage enchantments dealing over 200 damage no problem, cutting that damage in half and only doing around 100 damage is still more then just about any base weapon in the game iirc.

In conclusion: if your weilding fully smithed and enchanted gear raising diff to master will not make the game hard, it will just reduce you from god mode down to awsome.

shout out to illusion magic and stun locking as well.

what are other thoughts on this?

Stop Fortifying Restoration....

The kind of game balancing issues that are a problem in Bethesda's games is pretty annoying....it gives me the impression that they don't even play/test their own games, and develop everything inside a vacuum without seeing how things affect or have synergy with other things in the game.

So what your saying is, its only easy when you've reached the armor cap and have a fully smithed Daedric sword with two enchantments?

I don't use proffs except for enchanting, I sold all of my daedric armor cuz I finally caved to try and make the game harder, and I'm still fairly good... I mean im not doing INSANE anymore, so your advice is fairly spot on... although it defeats the purpose for some people, what people are asking for is this, or at least what I get from the threads (I'm not speaking for everyone, I'm just saying what I think they're saying):


That one of hte points they're playing the game is to become as good as they can, and when as good as you can makes the game dull, they don't want to play.

Say there is a piece of twine that represents how good you can be, the further along the twine the harder the game is, then a string that represents how hard the game is, the further along the twine the higher the difficulty, people either want the string to be longer, or the twine to be shorter... if thats not clear I'm saying that they want an extra difficulty setting that makes the game impossible or they want to have a lower armor cap, lower damage output, lower everything.

i get that there is abuse of the system....more importantly i hate that the system can be abused. I've never had a character above lvl 22....though i've had well over two dozen characters ^^; restartitis....anyways.......if you follow normal armor progression: Iron at 1, steel at 6, dwarven at 12, leather at 6, elven at 18, ect. ect. ect. it doesnt seem to bad. Abusing the sytem though is terrible :/ I don't like having to hold myself back in order to not break the game through normal level proggression. It's sad really.

It seems to me that they could solve any of these "problems" with a better difficulty slider. Instead of one that tinkered with the amount of damage done and taken (which jsut leads to long boring battles), they could have one that tinkered with the level of monster spawns. And a second slider that allowed you to vastly increase the amount of damage done by both PC and NPC's, so one hit kills would be common on both sides if that was your thing. And a third slider that affected sneak detection to stop people from complaining that sneak was OP.

see i dont feel difficulty equates to Someone hitting me harder or someone taking less damage. I wish you could increase monster spawn or decrease monster spawn to have smarter enemies...idk....i just don't think mitigating damage is a good way to go about difficulty :/ it just makes the fight boring. Look at dark souls. Its an AMAZING game, but honestly, the combat isnt nearly as difficult as everyone says, and it's supposed to get harder each time but the health and damage just goes up, it doesnt feel harder, it just feels either cheap or more of a grind fest cause i need to level equipment, ect. The mobs can still be defeated the same way. IN shadow of the collossus the mobs got new markers to attack and some even changed behavior on the higher difficulty. That would be nice.

yes Im starting believe this also I mean the 1.5 patch for the ps3 froze everytime you went in water

I have to agree with fights getting boring. Since I don't use any enchanting, alchemy, potions, stealth, magic, and ranged damage on my Warrior I have made him quite weak damage-wise. It's not a challenge but more of a fight about patience haha

Permanent level 1, no perks, master difficulty.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1343124-idea-new-playstyle

I wouldnt mind fights involving patience if they were exciting. But if its a fight of patience because i'm just waiting till i finally hit them x amount of times :/ well......one of my favorite parts about afor mentioned game is that all the mobs were a puzzle everytime.

The word 'abusing' infers that a player is doing something wrong, doing something they aren't supposed to be doing, ergo, 'cheating'. That simply isn't the case, not counting a few players who go out of their way to figure out and do freak combinations of things to make weapons with 100,000 damage... that, while not technically cheating, is definitely stretching the bejeebus out of every exploit you can possibly dig up

But most of us players who don't actively decide to gimp, aren't doing that sort of silly nonsense either. We're just choosing normal perks that make our characters stronger and more successful. We use standard smithing and crafting techniques (*without* deliberately hammering them up to 100 as fast as we can with a bunch of iron daggers), in order to improve gear we find and make gear we've earned the ability to make. And we do use normal +smithing gear you can find or buy, and any +smithing potions we loot or find... those were put into the game by Bethesda with the intention of being used by any and all players, correct? And by so playing quite normally in this fashion, we often find that we've outstripped the difficulty of the game, even on Master, sooner or later. And usually not all that 'later', either.

The key to understanding our argument, though, is your exact words above: "I don't like having to hold myself back in order to not break the game through normal level proggression". In short, having to gimp your char in order not to break the [crappy, nonexistent] game balance. You shouldn't have to look at some shiny new sword you've found with better damage, and think "Oh, I'd better just sell this and keep using my inferior weapon, or I'll be too strong". You shouldn't have to look at any crafting skill and think "I'd better not use this at all, or if I do, I'd better be sure not to be very good at it, or I'll be too strong". You shouldn't have to be forced to plan your character to be much weaker than it's possible to be, in order to not quickly overpower even the highest difficulty in the game.

On the contrary, when a game is done right, the hardest difficulty will naturally be a challenge for any and all, even those who've built the strongest character it is possible to build, with all the best of everything you can legally get from playing normally. And if your idea of fun is to gimp a char and force them to have a harder time making it through to increase your personal challenge, then you can also choose to do that at one of the lower levels, which if balanced properly, would provide just the right challenge for those kind of characters. As it is now, you have to settle for less than the best of everything readily available, just to have a challenge on Master. And that just isn't right. It's just poor/MIA game balancing, pure and simple.

I believe this is the point where the apologists come in and say "Oh, Bethesda has never done any kind of balancing in any TES games, you shouldn't even expect it from them."

To which we all should reply- "Why not, exactly?"

By failing in this respect, they are missing an opportunity to make Skyrim a lot more fun, for a lot more people, for a lot longer. Personally, I think that's a goal it couldn't hurt Bethesda to aim for.

Me too.

^

cool discusion actually, i was waiting to get yelled at lol.

just so you all know i prefer a much more lethal version of the game, both coming at me and going out, and i do use smithing, example.

diff set at middle, both sides are 1 v 1, no health or damage bonuses.

i play at level 81 so monsters are as tough as they can be

i dont invest in any of the armor perks, and dont smith my armor. though i do invest in shield perks.

fully smith weapons to do lots of damage.

no potions, no restoration.

i usually wear fur or hide armor because i like the feel of it. carry a shield, dagger, bow and arrows. this particular type of play style is very fun for me, usually me and the enemy only need one or two hits to kill each other, and that feels right to me. requires more thought out battles but there is no battle grind involved. i tend to sneak a bit more, avoid casters, and try to avoid large groups. at one point i was traveling east from riften when a DB assassin jumped out of the bushes, i was drawing my weapon when she killed me great time

I use Smithing and Alchemy but i don't use exploits, i go by plain skill and I'm still over powered.

meh :/ one hit kills bore me. That makes it come down to who has the initiative 90% of the time. I just want some puzzlesque enemies or something cause I'm tired of wack wack dead cause i have higher numbers....atleast if thats what the combat is going to be like......cause thats what it feels like, if it went back to morrowind number combat then I would be ok with numbered based combat, but as it is, it's ridiculous. But I don't neccessarily play for the combat. so w/e

i do see what you mean there, it would be cool for monsters to have weak/strong spots, more examples

Dragons: lore wise have weak undersides and strong backs, hitting them in the wing could hamper their flight and force them to land

Dwemer bots: have cores that power them, sounds like a weak spot, they also have sections that are nothing but armor so i dont really see doing damage, maybe you could break them off?

Trolls thick skin but but soft spots, face, hands, feet, etc.

actually alot of this was in fallout 3/NV so i dont think it would be to hard to incorperate? hitting a trol in the leg and they limp and cant run as fast? shoot something in the face and they loose track of you, then sneak real fast while they recover, etc.

it is pretty damn easy

YEah thats perfect. Wait 5 years for the game. Buy the game for 60 bucks. Play on the hardest difficulty. Fight your way up to a mid-high level character using weak equipment like hunting bow and iron arrows. Then when you did all this game-play all this loving of the game. Do not put on that armor. Do not use any alchemy. Do not use that epic bow or sword. Do not use armor improvements. Do not enchant anything. Do not use your perks. Do not sneak attack.

Using a hunting bow all game is pretty linear. Either this game has no depth (seeing as we cant do much else). Or the game is unbalanced. You decide.

Well said!


good idea. i like the idea of both sides being powerful.

Aw, damn. I never was any good at multiple choice questions... can I get two guesses?

I hate it as well, balance is very important in a game like Skyrim. I'm all for people forging there own path if they want too but it severely breaks the game. At least it's optional, unlike Fallout 3 post Broken Steel where you will be broken regardless of choice.


I hate having to hold my characters back but if I don't then the game will get too easy. If there was any type of a positive from Oblivion's level scaling is that it kept the game's difficulty up through out the whole game.

So in conclusion part 2: The difficulty slider is meaningless, because the added "difficulty" is simply more time spent to get to the point where you can do that.